I’m a firm believer in this statement, and that’s why I love the following ad by Big Ant International for Global Coalition for Peace. Great example how the form strengthens the message! Simple yet brilliant. Maybe that’s why they won the Gold Pensil for Design at the One Show Design Awards?
via Molblog
As I have indicated before, I’m a loyal reader of Seth Godin’s blog (together with hundred thousands of people). Today he wrote a post about PR which I cannot agree more with. Although Seth is true marketeer, he gets PR and know how it should work (if only all marketeers could that would make my job easier :-))If you want to read the post, click here.
Friends, colleagues and even my family I have bothered with Kings of Leon the past year. Forced to listen to them, some caved in and are just as much a fan as I am, others well…not so much. Though I am pretty sure that even the toughest cookies would have come around if they had joined me to their concert at the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam little over a week ago.
There is a lot to do between fans from the start and fans that have discovered KOL since their first succesful single here, Sex on Fire. Some fans that loved their first two albums are now turning away and calling them sellouts since their last two albums have been quite different. The latter group of fans is more into the last Cd’s. However, the setlist shows that both groups had no reason to complain as Kings of Leon played songs from all albums. My favourites were Milk, On Call, Use Somebody and of course Charmer. The beginning was still a bit quite, but after half an hour or so the fans and the band really started getting fired up. At the end of the encore, and 2 hours later(!) the whole venue (incl me) went crazy! Above you will see a great HQ video with one of their best songs, Milk.
Not only because I’m in PR, but also because I just love following the latest news, I read basically everything I can get my hands on. Newspapers, magazines and online media often have written about cancer and its causes. I’m not saying cancer should be taken lightly since it is a serious illness, but hearing about different products that can cause cancer every day can get a bit old. Warnings for products you use daily is not only tiring, but sometimes it just is downright ridiculous with Facebook being the latest thing claimed to cause cancer.
Thanks to Will Head on Twitter, I just read a list of possible products/activities that can cause cancer which was very interesting indeed. Some examples are Facebook, soup, a cold and oral sex. As all things have been published in the respected, renowned and trustworthy UK newspaper the Daily Mail, you know what to do with this information ;-)
As it’s been broadcasted quite frequently in the Netherlands the past week, I’m pretty sure some of you already have seen adidas’ new commercial. First thought that came to my mind is that they have put down a whole lot of money to create this star studded commercial. The following incredible list of celebrities are in the featured: Katy Perry, Estelle, Young Jeezy, the Ting Tings, DMC-Daryl McDaniels, Method Man, Redman, Afra, Ryukyudisko, Russell Simmons and Missy Elliott, athletes Kevin Garnett, David Beckham, Ilie Nastase and Mark Gonzales, and designers Kazuki and Jeremy Scott.
The commercial is part of the largest global brand campaign they have done – ever! 60 years after Adi Dassler registered the iconic 3-Stripes mark, adidas Originals is promoted under the banner of Celebrate Originality. “The campaign is set against the backdrop of a house party hosting an eclectic mix of people from the worlds of music, fashion and sport.” Hermann Deininger, CMO adidas Sport Style Division: “This is a campaign that celebrates all of them and offers an open invitation to consumers to come and join in.” For me they succeeded because the following video is a party I definitly would have wanted to be at!
The “house party” was directed by Nima Nourizadeh and features the track Beggin’ remixed by Pilooski.
Last year I already heard about the exhibition ‘Avedon Photographs 1946-2004′ when I was in Paris. I was bummed since I couldn’t visit it there due to lack of time, but oh so happy when I found out its tour would also pass Amsterdam, the city I love and live in!
Foam, a wonderful, small photography museum in the inner centre of Amsterdam showcasing this exhibition, has the following to say about the it:
It features over 200 works by Richard Avedon presented in chronological order, from his first photos made in Italy in 1946 to his final portraits, made shortly before his death in 2004. This is the first retrospective of his work to appear in the Netherlands.
As the exhibition takes a look at his career as a whole, the exhibition is a selection of Avedon’s most famous works as well as some hidden treasures. As I am only partly familiar with his work, I can’t wait to see more! You can too, from Feb 13th - May 13th 2009.
Richard Avedon Photograhs 1946-2004
Bob Dylan ©Richard Avedon
As some readers know, I work in PR. Today, a colleague of mine send me a link to a just incredibly ridiculous press release, a perfect example of how not to do it. The release is pretty long so I won’t copy it into this post, but it links Rolex, suicide and Owen Wilson. Curious how that works, read it here. Melrose Jewelry, a LA based company send out this piece of bs. Whoever gave this one a go should be fired!
Owen Wilson without his live saving Rolex? © Splash News
Some people have already discussed this release that was sent out last week (such as Matthew Odam and Matt). Marina Hyde of The Guardian, my favourite UK news paper, had a very funny piece on the press release which is definitely worth reading. Actually, if you have some time to spare, go read some of her lifestyle/celebrity articles, her sarcasm is just great!
Contradictio in termino, or not really? The Dutch Broadcasting Foundation (NOS) started with a new initiative that I found quite interesting. As of this month, their online channel will broadcast the news of ten years ago. Meaning that today I can watch the news of 7th January 1999.
I watched it yesterday, and it was fun to see how the news was different, the anchors spoke more official and dressed very formal. Of course it is also interesting to see how some things haven’t changed over the course of years (trouble in Israel, the cannabis usage in NL is moderate, and sadly how rebels kill people in Congo). If you want to have a look yourself, you can go here, it is broadcasted every day at 12:30 and 21:30.
As I grew up with it, I too was sad to see that Polaroid earlier this year decided to stop with making polaroid film (after stopping making the cameras in 2007). Much was written about it in newspapers, blogs and magazines. Dazed & Confused, one of the few magazines I have a subscription on, even did a 24 spread on Polaroid photography.
Who didn’t love the sound that the camera would make or the anticipation of waiting for the picture to develop in front of your eyes? No need to miss it anymore with the free application from Poladroid. You can drag and drop your photos onto the Poladroid “camera”, and after a few seconds it spits out your unprocessed print (with the original sound!). You can watch it develop and then save and print it. Pretty fun UI! For cool examples, go to the special Poladroid Flickr group. See my experiment below :-)
Yours truly in Nice
Although living in The Netherlands, speaking English is something that comes with my job as an account executive in an international pr agency. Therefore I had to laugh at NameWire’s post with two lists of the ten most irritating words or phrases in the English language (as I find some to be quite annoying as well). Here it goes:
Other words that could have easily fitted the lift for me are e.g. top of the game, up sell, leverage, empower, competency etc. What word are you most allergic to?
